The present invention relates to measuring bottlenecks, and in particular, to measuring bottlenecks in a client-server environment.
Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The Java™ programming language is a high-level language that may be characterized by all of the following buzzwords: simple, object oriented, distributed, multithreaded, dynamic, architecture neutral, portable, high performance, robust, and secure. Further details regarding each of these buzzwords can be found in “The Java™ Language Environment” by James Gosling and Henry McGilton.
In the Java™ programming language, source code is first written in plain text files ending with the .java extension. These source files are then compiled into .class files by a Java™ compiler such as javac. A .class file does not contain code that is native to a physical processor; it instead contains bytecodes—the machine language of the Java™ Virtual Machine (Java™ VM). A launcher tool (java.exe or other Java™ runtime environment) then runs the application with an instance of the Java™ VM.
The Java™ VM runs the application by converting the Java™ bytecodes into native instructions that are specific to the actual operating system and processor of the computing device. Since the bytecode is designed to be portable, but the Java™ VM is specific to the actual computing device, the Java™ VM may be modified in order to perform a wider variety of tasks yet still remain compliant with the Java™ standard.
In general, a Java™ program may be provided by a server to a client for execution. In a client-server enterprise environment such as that provided by the Java™ Enterprise Edition, the server may also execute a Java™ program that communicates with the Java™ program executed by the client, and that interfaces with database applications executed by the server. These Java™ programs may involve bottlenecks as the client accesses information stored by the server. For example, a bottleneck may be created at the server when the server locks data being accessed by the client. The delays these bottlenecks cause may be increased as the Java™ program is executed by multiple clients.
One way to measure bottlenecks is as follows. First, a high load is provided to the server. This helps to identify bottlenecks resulting from scalability issues. Second, the software is executed and the realized wait times are measured. Third, the bottlenecks are identified and addressed. Fourth, the steps of execution, measurement, identification and addressing are iteratively performed to identify further bottlenecks, since some bottlenecks may hide others.
In the above manner, many existing systems serially detect and remove bottlenecks.
Furthermore, bottlenecks are not confined to Java™ language implementations. Bottlenecks may be present in other distributed computing environments where access is coordinated to maintain data integrity.